There are so many things wrong with Maestro, now streaming on Netflix, it's hard to choose where to begin. Bradley Cooper's fake nose (to make him look more Jewish, how nice) is not one of them, although you've likely heard a lot about it already. Yes, it's big and clownish, but it's small change compared to the banal script, uber-gimmicky editing and incessant smoking of cigarettes by just about everyone on screen, extras included.
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| Bradley Cooper and his nose having a cigarette. |
Turns out Lenny was a closeted queen who married a beautiful actress named Felicia (Carey Mulligan) he professed to love although he treated her badly, stuck in the shadow of his increasing celebrity. To make this point clear, in one scene Felicia is a tiny figure actually standing in Lenny's enormous shadow while he is on stage conducting. The marriage produced three children who were kept in the dark about daddy's secret life, despite hearing rumors and the fact that his latest boy-toy often hung out with the family and joined him on dates with his wife, in public no less.
The film tries so hard to win an Oscar, it's cringe-inducing. Starting out in black and white signifying the early years, then switching to color to indicate more modern times -- oh wow! Jumping from one scene to another with no rhyme or reason, like one minute he's asleep and the next second he's on the stage at Carnegie Hall -- oh wow! Cooper has quite a bag of tricks up his sleeve -- give the man an Oscar already!!!!
The worst part is the intrusive exploitation of Felicia's sudden lung cancer and ultimate death. The telling is grisly, showing us way more than we need or want to see, and yet Lenny keeps on smoking despite her coughing up blood into little pieces of toilet paper. (Ultimately Bernstein had lung cancer himself but died of a heart attack at 72.)
When it's over, one wonders what made Bernstein so great. We certainly don't find out in this movie.
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